Friday, February 08, 2008

An Islamic group based in the UK has issued a death fatwa against a playwright whose London stage production depicts Jesus Christ as a homosexual.

Terrence McNally was sentenced to death by the Shari’ah Court of the UK as his play, Corpus Christi, opened in London on Thursday night.

…The religious edict was signed by Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, judge of the Shari’ah Court of the UK.

…The sheik added: “We do not believe in political assassination, but obviously he would face capital punishment.

“He will be arrested and there will be capital punishment.”

He said that under Islamic law, Mr McNally could only escape the fatwa by becoming a Muslim. If he simply repented he would still be killed - but his family would be cared for by the Islamic state.

And:

Woman artist gets death threats over gay Muslim photos

THE Dutch were debating the limits of freedom of expression last week after an artist who photographed gay men wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad was forced into hiding and her work removed from a museum exhibit.

Speaking on the telephone from an unspecified location in the Netherlands last week, the artist, an Iranian exile who goes by the pseudonym of Sooreh Hera, said she had been threatened with “execution”. She accused the director of the municipal museum in The Hague of cowardice for caving in to Muslim extremists.

Her story is a reminder of the tensions that have put the Netherlands and other European countries on the front line, sending dozens of people threatened by extremists into hiding since 2004, when a Dutch film-maker was murdered on the street and his collaborator driven into exile.

This leaves Hera, 34, in no doubt that she is in real danger. “They said to me, ‘We’re going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth’,” she said, referring to menacing e-mails.

“They say, ‘Now you are locked in your home and you cannot go out any more’.”

She said that by photographing gay Iranian exiles in masks of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Ali, his son-in-law, she had wanted to expose a “hypocritical” attitude towards homosexuality in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct.

…Wim van Krimpen, director of the museum, initially praised Hera’s collection of photographs as “exceptional”. Last month, however, he announced that the masked men could not be included in the forthcoming exhibition because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive”.

Islamism fears kill Dutch display

“They condemn homosexuality but in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia it is common for married men to maintain relations with other men,” says Hera. “Works of art can be provocative. It is not an artist’s job just to paint flowers. Art should shine a light on social issues.”

The photographs were part of an extensive collection of images by Hera of mostly Dutch gay men. Another part of her exhibit was a video featuring hard rock music and images of Iranian clerics interspersed with pictures of naked men.

New Mexico, January 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The case of a Christian photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex “commitment ceremony”, was heard before the New Mexico Human Rights Division on Monday.

A same-sex couple asked Elaine Huguenin, co-owner with her husband of Elane Photography, to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that the two women wanted to hold. Huguenin declined because her Christian beliefs are in conflict with the message communicated by the ceremony.

The same-sex couple filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Division, which is now trying Elane Photography under state anti discrimination laws for sexual orientation discrimination.

Isn't it time we grew up and stopped trying to legislate thought crimes?